


The Devil You Know

by orphan_account



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Domestic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:49:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4255242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Devil's name is Harry Hart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil You Know

One day, Eggsy steals a book.

 

***

 

There's this house in one of the posh neighbourhoods where Eggsy and his mates drive through at night sometimes, when they're buzzed enough to brave the odds of a police car following them but not so drunk that they can't make out the road ahead.

The house is always dark, nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac between two rows of beautiful townhouses with perfectly manicured gardens, and Eggsy thinks on more than one occasion about breaking in in the middle of the night – not to steal anything, but just to make himself a cup of tea and sit on a proper couch and breathe in the air of a proper home, without the stench of alcohol or cigarettes lingering around him, and bask in the quiet for a bit.

It's always so noisy at home.

He never does it, of course. Someone probably lives in that house and they wouldn't take very kindly to a street rat like him just breaking in and making himself at home. But he dreams about it sometimes, what it would be like to come home to a place like that, without Dean or any of his minions skulking about like hyenas. Just him and mum and Daisy. Just the three of them in a quaint little house with flower pots in the windows.

That's all it _can_ be, though – a dream.

 

***

 

One day, Eggsy steals a book.

He finds it tucked at the back of a shelf in the public library, crumpled up and crushed between two large hardcovers thick enough to beat a man to death with.

It's not even a book, per se; it's more like a notebook. Like one of those fancy moleskins that all the important, intellectual people in movies always carry around in their pockets. A bit bigger than his palm, with leathery covers and yellowed pages filled with tiny, barely legible type and weird pictures that look hand-drawn.

He stuffs it under his shirt, tucked under the waistband of his jeans. The little book is cool against his skin. He walks out of the library with his hands in his pockets like he doesn't have a care in the world. No one looks at him twice.

 

***

 

Eggsy saved Dean's life once.

He'd been jobless (and consequently broke) since he quit the Marines and returned home. For three long months, he mooched off his friends or borrowed money from mum to go have a pint with his mates at the pub every now and then. He'd stolen a couple of wallets to get by, pawned Rotti's phone once because the fucker was too self-assured that no one would dare – or could – pick his pockets and Eggsy thought it would do him good to learn some humility.

Dean was the only one who noticed. Didn't say a thing to Rottweiler though, which was surprising at first and absolutely terrifying later on when Dean was at the pub with his whole crew and Eggsy was there too and Dean stared him dead in the face even as he told Rotti he had no fuckin' clue how his phone ended up at the pawn shop, maybe he oughta take better care of his stuff, yeah?

When Eggsy came home the next morning after an entire night of stewing in his fear and imagining all the horrible things Dean would do to him – or even worse, to mum, or Daisy – Dean took him aside and told him he had a job for him, _if he'd be interested_. Like Eggsy ever had a choice.

And Eggsy just nodded numbly, his stomach in knots.

Dean took him to a fucking _drug lord's den_ that night. He said to him, "Ya gotta start earnin' yer keep, boy. And stealin' from mine ain't it."

Eggsy took one look at the gathering of lowlifes in that smoky, dim pub and thought, _"This is it: this is the rest of my life, right here."_

It's not like he was ever meant for anything better, really.

Then later that night, a group of buyers came in and started haggling with the boss and his men over prices and quantities and whatnot, and Eggsy could swear he knew one of them. He'd seen him somewhere before, just couldn't quite put his finger on _where_.

He'd been more or less openly staring at the man from behind the pint of beer he hadn't even touched since the waiter brought it when it finally _clicked_.

"We gotta get out of here," he whispered.

Dean, in the seat opposite his, gave Eggsy a look. "Why? Ya havin' second thoughts about this, Muggsy?"

"That one over there," Eggsy said with a subtle tilt of his head, eyes fixed on the men haggling over minutia a few tables over. "I think he's with the police or something. I seen him before, back when I was in the army. Came to the barracks a couple of times to talk to the Sargent. Whatever he is, he ain't here just to buy drugs."

Dean looked at him, his perpetual frown deepening into an angry rictus, but Eggsy had more pressing concerns at the moment than his stepfather's temper.

"Look," he said and shuffled out of his seat. "If you wanna stay here and get arrested with that lot, then be my fuckin' guest. But _I'm_ leavin'."

He walked out of that pub without looking back. Dean caught up with him not half a block later.

 

***

 

The newspapers the next day were all shouting in big blocky letters about the biggest drug bust this year.

Dean left Eggsy alone for a long while after that as his way of saying thanks. None of his crew touched him either.

It was a good month – probably the best month of Eggsy's life.

 

***

 

Eggsy goes straight home with the little book still hidden under his shirt and only in the safety of his room does he take it out.

He sits down on a corner of the bed and carefully, lovingly straightens out the crumpled pages. Some are coming loose from the stitching and he slots them back in where they belong and very carefully tapes them into place.

He's never done this before; he always just _broke_ things, never fixed them. It takes him hours to restore the little book and when he's finished, it doesn't look much better than when he began, but at least it's not coming apart at the seams anymore.

He looks at it, how old and wrinkled and misshapen it is, and he thinks, _"This is mine."_

And it is. It's _his_ book now. He took it off a shelf where it lay crumpled and torn and forgotten and he put it back together as best he could.

It's a thing he fixed; it's a thing he _saved_. And it's his, and it feels like he _earned_ it.

It is a good feeling.

 

***

 

Mum makes spaghetti and meatballs for dinner that night and some sort of sweet pea and carrot mash for Daisy.

Eggsy sits in their tiny kitchen, his food gone cold on the table, and tries to convince Daisy to eat hers. Mum stands by the open kitchen window, an unlit cigarette between her lips, and watches him scoop up a dollop of the stuff with his fingers and put it in his mouth. Daisy imitates him; sticks her whole hand in the bowl and smears most of the mash on her face and bib, but she's laughing, high and joyous, and Eggsy thinks about that house with the flower pots in the windows, and _wants_ – wants that life for them so much his heart _aches_ with it.

"Mum," he says, voice rough, just on the edge of breaking. "If I made us enough money to move outta this place, would you and Daisy come live with me? Just the three of us?"

Michelle looks at him for a long while, wide-eyed, cigarette hanging limp from the corner of her mouth. "That's a lot of money, babe," she says eventually, all quiet and cautious like she's treading on a minefield. "Why do you ask?"

Eggsy sees it in the little wrinkle between her brows, in the wary look in her eyes. The hesitation. The fear.

The _hope_.

He shrugs. "No reason. Just askin'."

 

***

 

That night, he stays up and reads the little book he stole. His little book.

It's a book about gods and demons, about wishes coming true and the price good men paid for it.

When he finishes the book, he lies awake in bed and stares at the ceiling and thinks about a quaint little house with flower pots in the windows, about mum and Daisy in matching sundresses going out for a stroll in the park, about movie nights and falling asleep in the middle of watching _The Little Mermaid_ and waking up to sunlight in his eyes, in the quiet peacefulness of a place that's just for the three of them.

That night he dreams about it.

 

***

 

Dean comes home drunk off his mind three nights in a row and Eggsy hopes with a viciousness he never knew himself capable of that he'll drink himself to death one night.

He's not that lucky.

 

***

 

Mum has a bottle of sleeping pills – under the counter stuff. She keeps it on the little shelf above the bathroom sink and it's been there for as long as Eggsy remembers. Sometimes it's full, sometimes less so, but it's become such a fixture that he doesn't even notice it anymore.

It stares him in the face one morning. One morning it's suddenly _there_ , front and centre, and Eggsy looks at it like he's never seen it before.

And he thinks, _"What if."_ What if he took a couple of those pills?

What if he took more than a couple?

What if he took them all, crushed them, and put them in Dean's beer? What if Dean went to sleep one night and never woke up?

He dreams about that too.

 

***

 

Eggsy keeps the little book about gods and demons under his pillow and leafs through it every night before going to sleep. It's his lullaby, his bedtime story. It puts him at ease like nothing else does these days – and how absolutely insane is it that he takes his comfort from reading about human sacrifices and blood-thirsty gods?

It's fantasy; escape. Harmless, because none of it is real, it's just a book. A creepy little book with creepy little stories and creepy little drawings and diagrams that he knows by heart by now.

He tries to draw some of those symbols on the backs of his old school books, but they come out crooked and clumsy. He keeps at it with a dogged determination until he can draw them from memory, with precision – perfect circles, each letter and symbol just like in the book.

He's good at it – at imitating things, at forging signatures. It's probably one of the reasons, if not the only reason, Dean hasn't killed him or kicked him out of the house yet.

It would be nice if it were real, though – the symbols, the incantations, the _stories_. At this point, he'd gladly sell his soul to the Devil if it got mum and Daisy away from Dean, away from this shitty, dead-end life and into something new and better. It would be worth it.

Then he thinks, his soul is probably too rotten anyway. No self-respecting demon would want it. Wouldn't trade him for a pack of gum, much less for a new house and a new life.

 

***

 

Dean comes home one night seething with rage and spoiling for a fight and takes it out on Michelle. Eggsy isn't home; he only comes in near the end of it and freezes in the doorway at the sight of Dean, red-faced and angrier than Eggsy had ever seen him, holding a kitchen knife to Michelle's neck where he has her cornered with her back to him.

He's shouting at her to give him the baby.

Daisy is wailing where she's cradled protectively in Michelle's arms and Michelle keeps saying "No, no, no," over and over again, her voice hoarse and breaking, and Eggsy _sees_ _red_.

He lunges at Dean, shoves him to the side and into the TV set and goes after him, blind with rage, hits him until his knuckles bleed. He doesn't even see the knife; doesn't feel the stab of it until Dean finally shoves him off and scrambles to his feet and Eggsy finds he can't muster the strength to get up and go at him again.

His hands slip on the floor when he tries to push himself up. They're wet and tacky with his own blood, and Eggsy stares at them uncomprehendingly and barely just registers the sound of the front door slamming shut. He lies there on the floor, feeling dizzy and wrung out – and maybe he should take a nap because it's gotten dark anyway and he's _so tired_.

It gets frightfully quiet for a moment. There's not a single sound to be heard – not mum's crying, not even Eggsy's own laboured breaths. Even Daisy's stopped crying. Then the noise returns in waves, and Eggsy realises with a calmness that would have worried him any other day that he'd blacked out for a minute.

Just long enough for Dean to get away.

Mum is hovering over him with the baby sobbing loudly in her arms. She looks pale as a sheet even with the bruises colouring her face and bursts into tears when she sees he's awake.

The whole front of Eggsy's shirt is soaked in blood, warm and sticky, and everything hurts. He manages a weak "I'm fine, mum" and rolls onto his stomach with a groan when he realises he can't pull himself up otherwise.

"Eggsy, don't move, babe," mum says, frantic, in between sobs. "I'll call you an ambulance, just stay still, please babe, you'll be fine, you'll be fine."

It doesn't feel like he'll be anything but _in pain_ for the rest of his life, but Eggsy doesn't say that. He grits his teeth against it and gets his legs under him long enough to crawl to the bathroom. His ears are ringing and his vision is blackening at the edges, and for a terrifying moment he doesn't know which way is up.

It takes him three tries to pull himself up on the closed seat of the toilet.

Michelle puts Daisy in her crib and rushes in after him. She kneels by the toilet and gently pulls his soaked shirt up to check the wound, wincing in sympathy when Eggsy hisses and closes his eyes.

"You'll be fine, babe," she says, phone to her ear. "You'll be fine."

 

***

 

He is fine – or as close to it as he can get, given that he'd been stabbed in the chest.

He's pretty damned lucky too, is what he is, because if Dean had gone for the stomach instead, Eggsy would've been dead long before the ambulance arrived. As it is now, he's got a nasty gash that goes across one of his pectorals and down the centre of his chest and he's going to need at least a dozen stitches.

The nurse who patches him up tells him he's got an angel looking out for him. The knife cut in pretty deep, but it slid along one of his ribs and down his sternum; an inch or two in any direction and it would've gone between the ribs and then he'd be dead.

Eggsy doesn't say anything to that; just sits there gritting his teeth as the nurse patches him up and thinks viciously that he'd rather have a devil looking out for him instead.

 

***

 

Dean doesn't come home for a few weeks. It gives Eggsy time to heal and think and spend time with mum and Daisy. For a little while, it's just the three of them, and life is good.

But like all good things, that too comes to an end.

 

***

 

Michelle is out doing some last minute grocery shopping when Dean returns.

When he comes back this time, Dean is sober, alert. He must have heard the talk around the block about how the police kept asking Michelle and Eggsy questions about what happened. Michelle hadn't said a word and Eggsy had kept his mouth shut too, even if it hurt to see his mum protecting the man who had come _this_ close to killing them.

Dean doesn't sneak in, not like Eggsy does every night or morning when he comes home, because Dean isn't afraid of anything, not in his own home – but he does freeze in the doorway for a moment when he sees that Eggsy's home, lounging on the couch and watching daytime television with the baby asleep in his arms.

"Muggsy," he says. "Still alive, I see."

Eggsy's lips curl into a sneer, but he doesn't say anything. Goes back to watching whatever's on TV, and Dean, for once unwilling to start anything, goes into the kitchen. There's the sound of the fridge door opening, the clinking of bottles, then Dean emerges with two beers in hand.

He leaves one in front of Eggsy on the coffee table and sits down on the couch next to him, opens his own beer and chugs down half of it in one go. Then he leans back with a pleased sigh and doesn't say another word, just watches TV with Eggsy and little Daisy like nothing's fucking wrong in the world.

That's how Michelle finds them when she comes back half an hour later.

"Dean," she says, tonelessly, staring at him in disbelief from the doorway, two bags of groceries at her feet where she'd set them down to unlock the door. "You're back."

Eggsy makes to stand up, but Dean puts a hand on his shoulder and presses down _hard_. Uses it as leverage and gets up, walks up to Michelle and takes the grocery bags from her, sets them on the counter by the door. Pulls her inside and closes the door behind her.

"'Course I'm back," he says. "Got a wife and kid to look after. Ain't gonna up and leave jus' 'cause of a little misunderstanding."

Eggsy almost flies off the handle at that, all the tension that had been coiling inside him since Dean walked through the door begging to be let out. It's Daisy's warm weight in his arms that stops him.

And Michelle, because she takes the words right out of Eggsy's mouth when she says, voice hard like Eggsy had never heard her before, "You _stabbed_ him."

Dean just puts an arm around her shoulders and steers her to the couch, sits her down next to Eggsy. "That was an accident," he says lightly, then pins Eggsy with a vicious look. "Ain't gonna happen again. Besides, Eggsy and me, we good now, ain't we?"

Eggsy feels his mum shift in her seat next to him as she tries to mask the start and the shiver that goes through her whenever Dean speaks. Eggsy has seen it so many times, has felt it so many times, it barely even surprises him. It's just that this is one time too many: the breaking point.

The moment he knows what he's going to do. The moment he decides he's going to kill this sonofabitch because there's nothing else that will keep Dean away from them. Not a restraining order, not moving out from the estates, not even _prison_. Just death.

It's suddenly so easy for Eggsy to unclench his jaw and relax, where before he'd been coiled and expectant, ready to bolt into action at the smallest provocation. The rage from before is still there – had never left, really – but it's tamed and quieted down, no longer a roiling volcano but a slow simmer in the pit of his stomach, warming him from the inside.

It's certainty. Resolve. And it feels _good_.

The smile he gives Dean is all teeth. "Yeah," he says. "We're good."

 

***

 

That night, after he puts Daisy to bed and hours after mum and Dean are asleep in their room, Eggsy lies awake in his bed, with his little book open on his chest, and thinks about angels and demons. When he finally falls asleep, he dreams about painting sigils on the walls of his room, the floor, the ceiling – tens, hundreds, thousands of sigils, and each of them calls forth a demon and they all kneel before him and they all speak as one. Their voice is thunder and earthquake – a force of nature – and Eggsy braves it, cold and unflinching.

They say, "Command us."

 

***

 

The idea takes root almost against Eggsy's will. He can't help his dreams, can't help that his life is so awful that calling on the supernatural for help seems to make more and more sense to him with each passing day.

It still hurts when he thinks back on that time in the hospital when the police came asking about his stab wound and mum gave him that wide-eyed, terrified look, quietly imploring him not to say anything. He knows it wouldn't have changed anything if he'd come forth and told the cops exactly how he got stabbed. He knows it would have probably made things worse because they still had to come home, and even if Dean wasn't there, his crew were, and that wasn't any better.

But Dean is back now and things seem to have quieted down. There are no more fights, the cops stopped coming around and asking questions, Daisy seems happy, and mum doesn't hide ugly bruises behind her hair and under her clothes anymore. Yet.

On really good days, she even smiles. On those really good days, Dean even smiles back.

It's peaceful.

 

***

 

It doesn't last.

 

***

 

This time, when the peace finally shatters, Eggsy is there for it.

Dean is merciless – but when is he not? Eggsy takes the beating without protest, lets mum clean him up after Dean storms out, shushes her when she won't stop apologising, kisses her forehead and wipes her tears and says, "It's okay, mum." Says, "Better me than you or Daisy."

But it's not okay. It never has been. And it has to _stop_.

 

***

 

He wakes up in the middle of the night, whole body sore and muscles stiff. He can hear Dean snoring in his sleep in the other room, and the old anger comes back with a vengeance. He lies in his bed and stares at the ceiling and tries to get his breathing under control.

What he does next probably falls under the term of temporary insanity, but he doesn't regret it – not then, not later, not _ever_.

 

***

 

Actual demon summoning is a lot easier in real life than it is on TV. There's no need for a blood sacrifice – plain old ink works well enough and it doesn’t even have to be red. A sharpie does the job just fine in a pinch.

There's not a lot of ceremony that goes with the act, either – no need for hoods or cloaks, no chanting, no weird ingredients for the spell. The incantation is simple enough that even someone with no prior knowledge of Latin can say it.

Eggsy's hand is steady when he draws the sigil on the floor, even if he's still blinking the sleep from his eyes. His voice is no more than a whisper when he speaks the words " _Veni, Lucifer_ ," but there's no hesitation. He's too far into it to second-guess himself now.

When it's over, he rocks back on his haunches and waits for something to happen.

There's nothing for a long time, just the noise of the city outside and the night breeze cooling the sweat on the back of his neck. Disappointed but kind of expecting it, he twists around and plants his elbows on the windowsill, leaning out to squint at the dim orange light of the lamppost from across the street and the animal that's tearing into a pile of garbage bags by an already overflowing bin.

Then someone's clearing their throat behind him and Eggsy just about jumps out of his skin at the sound. He falls back on his arse with all the grace of a newborn colt and when he twists around, certain that it's his mum coming in to check on him, he finds himself staring up at a man in a dark pinstripe suit.

Eggsy almost chokes on his own breath for a moment. The air sticks in his throat like molasses.

The sigil on the floor glows faintly in the semi-darkness of the room, the light pulsing like a heartbeat. The air inside the room feels charged, electric. Eggsy notices all this in the span of a millisecond, then promptly forgets it all when a gust of wind blows in, cooling the sweat gathered in his hair at the back of his neck.

The man smiles down at him, his eyes crinkling with mirth at the sight of Eggsy sprawled inelegantly on the floor, wide-eyed and pale and in his fucking _pyjamas_.

"Good evening," the man says. His voice is a soothing purr; his accent – just as posh as the rest of him. "You called?"

**Author's Note:**

>  **13/11/2016:** I'm marking this as finished because (1) it stands well enough on its own -- which is probably why I've spent months with no success trying to write the second part; and (2) I moved fandoms a couple of times since 2015 and Hartwin just... isn't it for me anymore, sorry to say. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading, commenting and kudos-ing; you guys are _amazing_ and I love you ♥


End file.
